Charles Allen’s latest book on India has a suitably exotic, occasionally improb- able, cast of characters. Centre stage is Dr Anton Führer, an unscrupulous German archaeologist hell-bent on discovering the legendary — and legendarily elusive — city of Kapilavastu, where the Buddha grew into manhood as Prince Siddhartha. Then there is the thoroughly decent British landowner, William Claxton Peppé, who in 1898 made an astonishing find: a reliquary casket, surrounded by a dazzling collection of jewels and gold, purporting to contain the ashes of the Buddha. A continent away in Europe is the most eminent Sanskrit scholar of his day, Doktor Johann Georg Bühler, Knight of the Prussian Order of the Crown, Comthur of the Order of Franz-Josef, Commander of the Indian Empire and Professor of Indian Philology and Archaeology at the University of Vienna. Vincent Smith, an ambitious civil servant and amateur historian, and U Ma, a disgruntled Burmese monk, lend further intrigue to the plot. The locations are equally colourful, set in the remote tarai, the rugged borderland between the foothills of the Nepalese Himalayas and the Gangetic plains of India.

The drama really began with Peppé’s extraordinary find on his sprawling estate. It set archaeological alarm bells ringing. If the inscription on the casket was correct, this was surely unique. No other earthly remains of the Buddha were so well authenticated. If only things were so simple. Archaeologists, like explorers, are a vexatious lot. It wasn’t long before Führer got involved in his capacity as the local government’s archaeological surveyor and curator of Lucknow Museum, well before anyone knew he was a dubious figure. Other archaeologists soon threw their spades in, too. Everyone wanted a piece of the action.

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